Some have tried to argue a finalistic view of the unprecedented accumulation of energy in the atomic era. Theodor Litt, for example, has suggested that man might realize his own nature in the face of a crisis situation by using his free will, deciding in full responsibility, taking the risk, in one direction or the other. Currently the decision is over the destructive and military use of atomic energy, or its 'constructive,' peaceful use. \nIn an epoch of dissolution, such an idea seems completely abstract and fantastic, typical of intellectuals with no sense of reality. First it presupposes the existence of men who still possess an inner law and sure ideas about what course should really be followed — and this, beyond anything that relates to the purely material world. Second, it presumes that these hypothetical men are the very ones entrusted with the use of the new means of power, in one direction or the other. Both suppositions are chimerical, especially the second. Today's leaders are caught in a tangle of actions and reactions that evade any real control; they obey irrational, collective influences, and are almost always at the service of special interests, ambitions, and material and economic rivalries that leave no room for a decision based on an enlightened freedom, a decision as an 'absolute person.' \nIn fact, even the alternative suggested above, over which our contemporaries agonize so much, may present itself in terms very different from those advanced by a pacifist, progressivist, moralizing humanitarianism. I truly cannot say what the person who still has hope for man should think of the imminence of quasi-apocalyptic destruction. It would certainly force many to face the existential problem in all its nakedness, and subject them to extreme trials; but is this a worse evil than that of mankind's safe, secure, satisfied, and total consignment to the kind of happiness that befits Nietzsche's 'last man': a comfortable consumer civilization of socialized human animals, aided by all the discoveries of science and industry and reproducing demographically in a squirming, catastrophic crescendo?

• progress
• science
• energy
• existentialism
• civilization
• power
• freedom
• peace
• ambition
• control
• destruction
• responsibility
• free will
• government
• politics
• apocalypse narrative
• humanity

No matter how you twist and turn the matter, Greece is never going to be able to pay its national debt. Neither are Spain, Italy, or half a dozen other nations that ran up big debts when it was cheap and convenient to do so, and are now being strangled by a panicking bond market and a collapsing economy. This isn't new; most of the countries on Earth have either defaulted outright on their debts or forced renegotiations on their creditors that left the latter with some equivalent of pennies on the dollar. The US last did that in a big way in 1934, when the Roosevelt administration unilaterally changed the terms on billions of dollars in Liberty Bonds from 'payable in gold' to 'payable in devalued dollars,' and proceeded to print the latter as needed. That or considerably worse will be happening in Europe in the near future, too. \nA good deal of the discussion of these upcoming defaults in the blogosphere, though, has insisted that these defaults will lead to a complete collapse of the world's financial economy, and from there to an equally complete collapse of the world's productive economy, leaving all seven billion of us to starve in the gutter. It's an odd belief, since sovereign debt defaults have happened many times in the recent past, currency collapses are far from rare in economic history, and nation-states can do - and have done - plenty of drastic things to keep goods and services flowing in an economic emergency. Partly, I suspect, it's our old friend the apocalypse meme - the notion, pervasive in modern culture, that the only alternative to the indefinite continuation of business as usual is some unparalleled cataclysm or other. \nStill, there's another dimension to these fantasies, which is simply that the financial industry has done a superb job of convincing people that what they do is important to the rest of us. It's true, to be sure, that having currency in circulation makes economic exchanges easier, and the kind of banking services that people and ordinary businesses use are also very helpful, but governments used to produce and circulate currency without benefit of banks until fairly recently, and banking services of the kind I've just mentioned can be provided quickly and easily by a government that means business; in 1933 it took the US government just over a week, at a time when information technology was incomparably slower than it is today, to nationalize every bank in the country and open their doors under Federal management. The other services the financial industry provides to the real economy can equally well be replaced by hastily kluged substitutes, or simply put on hold for the duration of the crisis. \nSo the downside of any financial crisis, however grandiose, can be stopped promptly by proven methods. Then there's the upside. Yes, there's an upside. That's the ultimate secret of the financial crisis, the thing that nobody anywhere wants to talk about: if a country gets into a credit crisis, defaulting on its debts is the one option that consistently leads to recovery. \nThat statement ought to be old hat by now. Russia defaulted on its debts in 1998, and that default marked the end of its post-Soviet economic crisis and the beginning of its current period of relative prosperity. Argentina defaulted on its debts in 2002, and the default put an end to its deep recession and set it on the road to recovery. Even more to the point, Iceland was the one European country that refused the EU demand that the debts of failed banks must be passed on to governments; instead, in 2008, the Icelandic government allowed the country's three biggest banks to fold, paid off Icelandic depositors by way of the existing deposit insurance scheme, and left foreign investors twisting in the wind. Since that time, Iceland has been the only European country to see a sustained recovery. \nWhen Greece defaults on its debts and leaves the Euro, in turn, there will be a bit of scrambling, and then the Greek recovery will begin. That's the reason the EU has been trying so frantically to keep Greece from defaulting, no matter how many Euros have to be shoveled down how many ratholes to prevent it. Once the Greek default happens, and it will - the number of ratholes is multiplying much faster than Euros can be shoveled into them - the other southern European nations that are crushed by excessive debt will line up to do the same. There will be a massive stock market crash, a great many banks will go broke, a lot of rich people and an even larger number of middle class people will lose a great deal of money, politicians will make an assortment of stern and defiant speeches, and then the great European financial crisis will be over and people can get on with their lives.

• apocalypse narrative
• narratization
• debt
• market collapse
• financial collapse
• economics
• european union
• banks
• government
• money
• the great despression
• usa
• currency
• europe